Protective foot and footwear covering

ABSTRACT

The inventive concept is directed to a unitary protective cover for either a foot or a shoe. The cover is made of a plastic material, is stretchable and fluid impervious. The cover is so constructed to extend above an ankle of a leg of a wearer and the cover has a stretchable band it its top to hug the leg of a wearer. The elastic band can made by doubling the basic material of the cover at this location. The protective cover is form fitting to the extent that it will separate the toes of a foot. The protective cover is mainly designed and intended to cover open sores of the foot that were caused by an accident, abrasion or surgery.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The inventive concept is directed to protecting the feet of the wearerwho has experienced an operation or other open sores. It is imperativethat any open injuries of the feet have to be protected against anypossible egress of bacteria and other contaminations. Such protectivecoverings are known an hands by surgeons, for example, and they aretermed to be surgical gloves. But such protective coverings are notknown to be used on feet and on footwear.

U.S. Pat. No. 3,798,503 discloses a sanitary foot and shoe cover whichis formed of single sheet of flexible material. The cover includes aseamless bottom sole portion having a forward toe and rear heel seamextending upwardly from the sole portion. The cover is formed of anyflexible and foldable material and can conveniently be formed from of asuitable paper or cloth material which can be sewed.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,697,106 teaches the use of a laminate foot coveringwhich is impermeable to liquids. This patent teaches the use of anelastic necked-stretched laminate which may include an elastic layercaptured between two neck-stretched spun bound layers.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The inventive concept is directed toward a foot or a footwear coveringwhich is of a unitary molded construction and at the same time it isstretchable so that the protective device can be placed over a foot andat the same time over footwear such as a shoe. The idea of theprotective device is to form a barrier between a foot that has opensores which were created because of an accident or because of a surgery.The protective cover acts as barrier to prevent any bacteria or othercontaminants from reaching the sore. The barrier can also be used byhealth care workers to protect the health care worker from pathogenicagents, particularly those present in blood or other body fluids. Ifplaced over a footwear, the protective covering will protect surgicalpersonnel from picking up contaminants present on the floor in theoperating room and to prevent that person from taking the contaminantsout into the general environment. The protective covering can also beused by workers entering a home for repair work to protect floors andcarpeting from the worker's shoes. Of course, the protective cover canbe destroyed after each use.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

FIG. 1 shows the unitary construction of the foot covering;

FIG. 2 Shows the protective covering as applied to a shoe;

FIG. 3 shows the covering applied to a foot including the toes.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

FIG. 1 shows the protective covering 10 as it is applied to a foot. Thematerial is highly stretchable and is made of a unitary construction ora molding. The protective covering snugly fits the foot including theankle portion 11 and the heel portion 13. The covering extends upwardlyfrom the heel 13 and the ankle portion 11 into the lower leg area and anelastic band 12 is formed at this location. The elastic band portion mayby formed of the same basic material as the covering but may be doubledto increase its elasticity. The sole or bottom foot portion 14 fitssnugly against the foot bottom including the metatarsal portion of thefoot. The foot covering surrounds the toe portion 15.

FIG. 2 illustrates the protective covering 20 placed over a shoe havinga snug configuration. The ankle portion of the leg can be seen at 21 andthe heel portion of the shoe at 23 and 24 is shoe bottom portion.

FIG. 3 shows a protective foot protector 30 that is more form conformingin that the protector has the toe area 35 is formed into toe stalls ofthe protective covering 30. By having separate toe compartments 35, theprotector will eliminate sore toes from contacting each other. This mayprove to be beneficial in many instances where there is a fungus presenton a foot.

There are many ways the foot and or shoe protector can be manufactured.One is by molding and another is by dipping whereby a prepared form maybe repeatedly dipped into a plastic composition and after apredetermined thickness has accumulated on the form, the accumulatedmaterial may be stripped from the form.

Another known process is a melt-blowing process where the material isblown onto a form until the proper thickness has been obtained and againthe finished material may be stripped from the form.

The material or the composition used in this protector may be derivedfrom many thermoplastic materials such a polyvinyl chloride,fluorocarbons, polyformaldehyde including thermosetting polyesters,silicones and urethanes.

1. A foot or footwear protector comprising a form fitting and unitarycover which is placed over a foot or a footwear, said form fitting coveris made of a stretchable and fluid impervious plastic material.
 2. Theprotector of claim 1, wherein said cover extends above an ankle of awearer and up the leg to some extent and an elastic band is formed atsaid location.
 3. The protector of claim 2, wherein said elastic band isformed by doubling the material of the basic protector.
 4. The protectorof claim 1, said form fitting cover is separating individual toes fromeach other.